Texas State University Business Continuity Program

Typical the first step in developing a business continuity program is conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Questionnaire. The BIA is a consistent and objective way to gather information regarding a workgroup and its function.  Elements of risk are also identified.  The survey asks a wide variety of questions.  To list only a very few:

• What is the minimum number of persons that would be needed to re-establish the workgroup's time-sensitive functions at the recovery site?
• Specifically, who will perform the identified time-sensitive functions?  Specifically, who are their trained back ups?
• What computer applications are absolutely critical to the workgroup's function?
• Who are the workgroup's customers and/or contacts (both internal and external to the organization) that would be most affected by its downtime?  Do you have their contact information stored off-site?
• Who are your critical vendors?  Do you have their contact information stored off-site?
• For each major workgroup function, what is the maximum amount of downtime that can be tolerated?
• Any critical documents, reports, or microfiche?  If so, what are they and where are they?
• Are there fines or breach of contract conditions that can result from this workgroup's downtime?
• Are there highly modified or one-of-a-kind devices that are critical to the workgroup's operation?  If so, do they have back ups?
• Are the workgroup's servers and/or PC hard drives backed up on a regular basis?  If so, is the backup media taken to a secure off-site location? 

Another reason to perform BIA is to determine the relative degree of time-sensitivity or criticality of the organization's workgroups.  If you asked all the organization's supervisors about their workgroup's degree of “time-sensitivity, they would say that their workgroup's function is the most important to the organization's survival.  However, in reality, there will be only a few workgroups that are absolutely mission critical, there will be some that are pretty important, and several that are not time-sensitive.

The reason for realistically classifying the workgroups to their degree of “time-sensitivity” is that you want to recover only the most time-sensitive organizational functions first.  Organizational functions considered less time-sensitive could be recovered later in a phased manner.  It is unwise (and probably impossible) to try and restore everyone at the same time.  The BIA process assists the coordinator in objectively making decisions by providing facts and information that can be compared across the wide variety of workgroups.

Examples

Worksheets